Saying I finished in the top 15% of my age group in last month's Chicago Triathlon is like bragging that I could outrun your grandpa. My age group was 50 to 54.

But against the entire sprint-distance field, I finished in the top 11%. That's right: Team Geriatric outperformed the field.

I'd love to report that this reflects the age-defying effects of triathlon. But my hair is gray, my hearing is dull and my per-mile pace is slower than it used to be, even at shorter distances.

Rather, this old-timer triumph is attributable to something that fogies throughout the ages have lamented: kids these days.

They're just not very fast. "There's not as many super-competitive athletes today as when the baby boomers were in their 20s and 30s," said Ryan Lamppa, spokesman for Running USA, an industry-funded research group. While noting the health benefits that endurance racing confers regardless of pace, Lamppa—a 54-year-old competitive runner—said, "Many new runners come from a mind-set where everyone gets a medal and it's good enough just to finish."

Now, a generational battle is raging in endurance athletics. Old-timers are suggesting that performance-related apathy among young amateur athletes helps explain why America hasn't won an Olympic marathon medal since 2004.

Of the two Americans who won marathon medals that year, one—Deena Kastor, who is now 40—was the top finishing American woman at the marathon World Championships in Moscow last month. The other—38-year-old Meb Keflezighi—was the top American male finisher at the London Olympics marathon last year. Hunter Kemper, the 37-year-old winner of last month's Chicago Triathlon, remains arguably America's top triathlete as he aims for his fifth Olympics.

"Why isn't any younger athlete knocking them down a notch?" said Lamppa.

Some observers see larger and scarier implications in the declining competitiveness of young endurance athletes. "This is emblematic of the state of America's competitiveness, and should be of concern to us all," Toni Reavis, a veteran running commentator, wrote in a blog post this week entitled "Dumbing Down, Slowing Down."

Median U.S. marathon finishes for men rose 44 minutes from 1980 through 2011, according to Running USA, and last year nearly 75% of road-race finishers were 44 or younger, with 25- to 34-year-olds representing the largest age group.

Last month, Competitor Group Inc. announced it would no longer pay appearance fees for professional runners to compete at its Rock 'n' Roll marathon and half-marathon series in the U.S. CGI still pays travel expenses and more for the elite.

But to some observers, that change contributed to a growing embrace of mediocrity.

"If you're going to get just as much praise for doing a four-hour marathon as a three-hour, why bother killing yourself training?" asked Robert Johnson, a founder of LetsRun.com, adding that, "It's hard to do well in a marathon if your idea of a long session is watching season four of 'The Wire.'"

But instead of fighting back, the young increasingly are thumbing their nose at the very concept of racing. Among some, it simply isn't cool, an idea hilariously illustrated in a 2007 YouTube Video called the Hipster Olympics. In those Games, contestants do anything to avoid crossing the finish line—drink beer, lounge in the grass, surf the Web.

Yet something remotely akin to that is happening. Perhaps the fastest-growing endurance event in the country, the Color Run, doesn't time participants or post results. "Less about your 10-minute mile and more about having the time of your life, The Color Run is a five-kilometer, un-timed race," says its website.

Then there is Tough Mudder, a fast-growing series of obstacle-course challenges that proudly dispenses with an endurance-racing staple: the results page. "Since Tough Mudder is an event, not a race, we do not post the finish times on our site," says the Tough Mudder website. Arguing that results pages detract from camaraderie, Tough Mudder adds that obsessing about finish times is "lame."

That idea sounds downright un-American to Joe Desena, founder of the rival Spartan Race obstacle-course series. His competitors are timed and their results posted, with many aspiring to earn a slot in the Spartan World Championship this weekend. Likening to communism events that promote "hand-holding over competition," Desena said, "How well is that everybody-gets-a-trophy mentality working in our schools?"

Desena also contends that eliminating timing chips and results pages is a sure way to increase profit—while shielding one's customers' names from competitors. For Spartan, the cost of tracking and posting performances is significant, he says. "If you can pull the wool over your customers' eyes and convince them that communism is better, you can drop at least $40,000 to your bottom line every race," he said.

Of course, there are countless super-elite young athletes. And only because the young have no need to prove they're not old was I able to outrace so many of them last month. Still, apathetic competition offers little comfort to some aging athletes.

After finishing last month's Virginia Beach half marathon in the top 2% of the 50-54 age group, Brendan Reilly was shocked to find he'd made the top 1% of the overall field—despite running 27 minutes slower than the personal best he'd set more than two decades earlier.

"I wasn't thrilled," said Reilly, a sports agent in Boulder, Colo., adding that "races are turning into parades."

Back in the eighties, there were runners and there were joggers. Few wanted to be labeled a jogger, so most were trying to beat the people ahead of them.

Fast forward to today, and most races are participatory events. For the price of admission, participants get a t-shirt, an expo, a post-race party, the all-important medal if they finish, and the satisfaction they participated for a worthy cause.

Whether we care to admit it, we are all products of the eras in which we grew up.

"The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers."-Socrates, circa 400 BC.

Socrates also said "there is nothing new under the sun", and that certainly goes for the time-worn habit of older generations complaining about the younger generations.

Like most of the other posters have pointed out here, Helliker's argument's fatal flaw is that he doesn't take into account the increased popularity of running, drawing a lot more "average" people who are just in the races for the sense of personal accomplishment and (god forbid) FUN, and don't care about being "competitive athletes," and this is naturally going to skew average finishing times upwards. The increase of average people wanting to get out there and participate in marathons and triathalons for fun is a very good thing, and Helliker should have thought about that before he typed this ignorant and self-serving piece.

Perhaps it's because long distance running is mind numbingly boring that younger athletes search out other ways to challenge themselves and compete.

For instance, CrossFit is hugely popular in my home town, Portland, Oregon. There are CrossFit gyms seemingly everywhere, and the words endurance and competition are what the sport, if you want to call it that, is all about.

Are the winners getting faster or not? There could be many more people participating, and that could cause people who are serious to appear better than they did before, because they're being compared not just to other serious athletes but to more casual ones. If they're off the couch and running a "slow" 4 hour marathon instead, that is fabulous, not terrible.

Or you know, it could just mean a lack of interest in THAT PARTICULAR activity.People have different priorities, and with the current dogma of working 2 jobs to support a family not many people have time for a dedicated 'sport'.

That being said, who cares? As long as I have fast people to train with (and I do), I couldn't care less about the statistics of the general population. It's still tough to win a decent sized race in my area.

No wonder kids compete within video games. The adults these days want to make everything as fair as possible and shield their little darlings from the reality of the rest of the world.

There are winners and losers. Accept it. Your kids already do. They don't always win in their video games. But then they go back and try harder to win the next round/game/level.

Why do physical competitive challenges if everyone gets a trophy? Let the kids who didn't win see the trophy and yearn for it. They'll try harder next time; as long as you don't tell them that it doesn't matter that they didn't win. Teaching apathy to your children does a great disservice to them.

There's a definite difference in competitive mindset between the generations. I know Millennials take a wrap for being the outcome based generation, but it was there parents that came up with the everyone gets a medal scheme. They'll figure out how to fit into a competitive world where only the winners win, or, they'll change the way the world defines winning. Either way, it's nice to see participation up, and all that matters is that participants are happy with their experience. Lord knows the race organizers are happy with the entry fee's and the bodies.

I've known too many weekend warriors who's self worth and ego fulfillment hinges on where they place. They can be painfully annoying to be around.

While I'm no defender of the whole "participation ribbon" thing I will say that the reason the median and mean marathon times is probably a result of a larger field of contestants. If you have 100 people in 1980, they were all competitive, they all wanted to be there to test themselves against others of similar mindsets. In 2010 that edge is gone because you get the participation ribbon of that "26.2" sticker you get to put on your car window. More people are doing it, most of them only train for the six months prior just to do one and be done. Now everyone has a marathon or triathalon under their belt (not me, my oversized pants are the only thing under my belt) but there is a much larger field. I guarantee those that finish in the top ten percent of the racers will start telling themselves they could be better if they got more competitive, so all its doing is introducing more people to the fad.

Yeah, kids these days. And in another generation we'll complain about how competitive kids have become. Everyone but ourselves are to blame for everything but ourselves, and that's all genetic, not our life choices. Stupid argument from someone who got the AARP codger card. If you spent less time looking for marathons and turned that energy toward something socially productive you might have less to complain about and kids would be more inclined to emulate you. As it stands now though, you're probably an emaciated, intense, sunken-cheeked geriatric in a nut-hugging spandex suit with duct tape on your nipples. That makes you a freak, do you think that lifestyle merits emulation?

This is one of the worst articles I've read in the WSJ. The reasons are all well articulated in the comments of other readers. This author sounds like some old guy trying to come up with one more reason his generation is wonderful and kids-these-days are worse people than he and his friends.

What this article fails to note is the huge increase in marathon and half-marathon races in the US over the past decade and a huge increase in participation slots as well. It may seem that average times have become slower over the years, but that statistic doesn't account for the large number of AMATEUR participants. This new generation of runners view races as a form of exercise and enjoyment. So yeah, they probably don't mind too much that they aren't finishing in the top 10%. Why? Because I'm sure that knee replacement at age 45 won't be worth the extra 10 minutes they shaved off their marathon time.

As a 28 year old member of the "slacker generation" who just finished his first ironman and 9th marathon I would argue that cost is a major detractor for young people to get involved in triathlons let alone become an elite triathlete. I spent a couple thousand dollars preparing for and racing in the ironman and that does not include the purchase price of a bike. How many 20 somethings can afford to drop $10k on a TT bike and zipp wheels to gain the competitive edge needed to reach the podium? Especially when the purse is usually small comparatively. The winner of the Louisville Ironman only received a few thousand dollars in prize money. Maybe the younger generation just has a better grasp on economics (doubtful, but an argument nonetheless).

All that said I do agree that our country would be a better place if people got off the couch and went for a jog.

I would bet that the marathon participation rate by the younger generation is much lower than in the baby boomer era as well. This hardly shows a lack of ability in distance running, but more a lack of interest. The younger generation has as many elite athletes as ever, they just aren't interested in using that athleticism to run at a slow pace for hours at a time. Modern sports medicine has also confirmed that extended slow-paced running is an incredibly unhealthy and inefficient means to get your body in peak shape.

And, as someone who has finished a Tough Mudder, I would love to see the 50-something author of this article try and complete that event before citing it as proof of a "lack of competition" in America's youth. Having run the Spartan Race as well, I would say hands down, despite the clock, Joe Desena's "race" is a cake-walk in comparison. Even better yet, I would love for the author to join for a few workouts at my Crossfit gym ;)

This article doesn't square with me. Marathoners hit their peak around age 35. The two US runners mentioned in Moscow are in their prime. If you look at professional sports, athletes are continually getting bigger and faster. The fact that recreational runners aren't as obsessed with pushing their bodies to the breaking point is maybe a good thing. BTW, I'm a runner that's older than the author and I don't see a problem here.

Why is it that the most competitive "elite runners" are lamenting that others aren't trying harder ... and then losing by a smaller margin to the "elite"? This feels like a pool shark lamenting that the marks they are fleecing just aren't trying hard enough. It's pretty clear that interest in amateur (i.e., unpaid) athletics waxes and wanes between generations and over decades of consumer trends. Fads run their course, and the "true believers" are the ones elated with beating the crowd of newcomers, then lamenting the lack of people to stand on when the fad ends. Before you post stinging rebukes, take a deep breath with me and realize that the "slacker generation" fad will fade as well ... human nature does not change. To the victor go the spoils. The pendulum will swing back and you will have a new crowd of newbies to dominate.

Shocking as this may be to Mr. Helliker and his impossible-to-please cohort, it turns out that not everyone does everything for exactly the same reasons. I share the concerns that most older people have about the youngest members of our society; I used to be a high school teacher, and their disinterest in reading or turning in homework is utterly appalling. But to lambast them for having any reason for participating other than the desire to finish as quickly as possible is a crime of gross ignorance. Remember, this is a generation that is also criticized for not knowing how to form real relationships, for being more comfortable in online chatrooms than on actual dates. Instead, thousands of them are getting together with friends – with real live people! – to participate in an athletic event that most of us have decided is too hard to attempt. Some of them are young mothers and fathers pushing strollers. What’s wrong with those idiots? Don’t they know the stroller is going to slow them down?

A rise in non-competitive endurance races demonstrates America's global lack of competitiveness? I'm sorry, but this logic is too big of a jump. I agree that most Americans are soft, but I think this article suffers from major confirmation bias- you're making events justify your preconceived notions.

You have the second generation being raised on participation medals, showing up trophies, no-score-kept soccer, little league mercy rules... need I continue. No wonder they don't really care how fast they go since the get congratulations for showing up.

Consider the context. These so-called races are not Olympic Trials. The finish times don't matter unless you're an elite runner competing for prizes. Most runners are not there to set Personal Records. They're running for exercise, to support a cause, to socialize and for fun. They're not competing against other runners - some of whom may have physical challenges not evident from their age brackets. If participant T-shirts, finisher medals and party atmospheres help to motivate the otherwise-lethargic, that's fantastic..

They aren't just athletic underachievers, they are underachievers at work also.

To think these underachievers will be giving us old folks medical advice, prescriptions, designing roads/bridges and performing other jobs where our lives and health will be in their hands is not very reassuring.

Liberal social engineering at its best - reduced quality, unintended consequences, and everyone but the supporters of junk philosophy paying the cost. This is what happens from "everyone is a winner" mentality. Some of life's unpleasant lessons must be learned young and the older you are when the sad reality crashes in, the worst prepared you will be to handle it. It is better to learn to try like hell and lose - that you will not always win - then to be lied to until you're 22 or 23 and realize you can't handle life.

The author does not explain if slower overall times are due to higher participation rates in organized running events. I think this is a potentially critical omission and could change the conclusions reached. That is, if more "millennials" and other younger persons are participating in organized run events, the average times will go up but it could be seen as a positive sign that the events are drawing larger and more diverse crowds.

The Boomers created the Millennial Generation. We have only ourselves to blame.

As a Boomer I was raised by the Greatest Generation and was taught that there are winners and losers. If you are not one you are the other. I lived a life of being fanatically competitive. Even now I run five miles a day and work out for 90 minutes. My two Millennial sons take similar tacks both who ran a marathon last weekend.

Also as a Boomer I was always deeply distrustful of my long haired hippy contemporaries. To protest the culture I joined the military and spent 22 years of active service. I always felt the Greatest Generation did everything right and deserve their name with the exception they spoiled the Boomers into the calamity they became.

Nonetheless I learned that the Baby Boomer generation had many good people in it. However at its core was a fatally unsound left wing philosophy that all too many held and that could only lead to disaster. In the aggregate their blood, the Millennial Generation, is a deeply flawed in so many ways.

I just hope it doesn’t take a catastrophic collapse of Western Civilization, at great cost, to calibrate the Millennial Generation to clear thinking.

Sorry to be watering down your stats, Mr. Helliker. However, I still prefer the weight-loss stats I've accumulated while training and competing (er, participating) in 2 sprint triathlons over your incomplete analysis of race data. #winning

It is simply killing America. We have to teach out kids to be competitive, to win (and to lose, if your not good enough).

America is certainly in decline and we wont come out of it with this mentality. It is such a shame. We have been taken over by communists (from within), after we defeated the communists (from without) 20 years ago.

Average marathon times have risen over the past 35 years because there are average runners participating now, which was not the case 35 years ago. I'll bet if you take the top 500 finishers from any major marathon from years 1978 and 2013, you'll find the average times are pretty close, at least for the men.

An interesting read is the story of Andy Payne who won the Trans-American footrace of 1928.He ran 3,423.5 miles from Los Angeles to New York City along Rt 66, in 573 hours, 4 minutes, 34 seconds, (23 days) averaging 6 miles per hour over 84 days.They still hold the Andy Payne marathon in OK every year and people have a blast.

I've done triathalons since I was in my twenties and still do them 40 years later. For me, it was never about winning...it was about competing with myself. I already knew that I could run and bike well and could swim like I was carrying a bag of rocks with me so there was no point in training to shave a few seconds off of my times.I couldn't afford a racing bike back then so I raced on my 30 lb mountain bike.I think a lot of us raced and race for the joy of doing it. Who cares where you finish as long as you've done your best and are happy doing it? My wife had the distinction of finishing dead last in her first 10k and she could have cared less. It was about doing it.

I think it all depends on the type of muscle fibers..slow twitch or slow, that you have more of. I do well in short, intense races...from relays to 10ks but after that, I fall apart. I've done 1/2 marathons and full marathons but find they just aren't for me.I find the same with bike races. Short races are great but a century just doesn't do it for me.That said, I have committed to do the Andy Payne Marathon (look him and his race up) and the Mt. Washington Auto Road Bicycle Climb with my nephew. He's a long distance guy so we're doing one race for him and the bike race for me.My first tough mudder is Nov 2nd. I'm 64 and hope to survive. I have signed my death waiver. Looks like it will be a blast.

My daughter set a world record at 41 years old, well her relay team did. She placed in the top ten in the only triathlon that she ever entered, on a borrowed bicycle. It is a matter of wanting to be the best that you can be.

I suspect the opposite is actually true. There were 35,000 NYC Marathon participants in 2003; there were 47,000 finishers in 2011 and a lot more who were turned away by the lottery system. There are a lot more casual runners today because there are a lot more runners overall, and those casual runners are going to skew towards the younger crowd because running has become increasingly popular over time.

I would also guess that people who are still running marathons at age 50-54 are more likely to actually be good at it. Endurance athletes peak at a later age than sprinters and other athletes, so it doesn't surprise me at all to see champions in their late 30s. Triathletes in particular are a bad example because being a successful triathlete is expensive -- it requires thousands of dollars, if not more, between bike, wetsuit, and other costs, plus the time to train in all three disciplines. Most triathletes I know picked it up in their 30s, in part for that reason.

What do you think that lack of competitive instinct is, if "not interested"?

I blame the lack of competitive spirit on on the public school system and the one size fits all education agenda of the teachers' unions. Kids are brain washed from the time that they enter school to believe that aiming for mediocrity is OK.

Not everyone can excel, but everyone should try. Of course, if you don't try, you cannot fail. That seems to be the predominant attitude in sports, in school work and maybe in business. That's how the 47% number of die hard Obama supporters came about.

In many this realization will be masked by a sense of victimization that will preclude the accumulation of useful experience and translate into certain unproductive voting patterns that I needn't elaborate on.

Sorry to be such a troll, but this would not explain the advanced age of our champions. Certainly higher overall participation would result in a larger talent pool from which more exceptional people would emerge—if they were actually trying hard.

On the other hand, guys at my high school are running way faster than we did when I was there a quarter-century ago.

Agreed. I knew very few people running marathons 10-15 years ago, now it seems that it's on everyone's 'bucket list'. these bucket-listers are just happy to finish and cross it off their list, and I would imagine that the increase in participants will drag down the average times

As more people pick up these long-distance events, the average finishing times will drop (less experienced, less competitive runners). I think we can probably take some encouragement from this about what it means for American competitiveness - more people willing to put in the hard work and effort to achieve a personal goal. Isn't that what capitalism is all about?

Exactly! It's the same with declining ACT and SAT scores. The more of the "average" kids take the tests the statistical norm is going to move away from higher scores to lower. It's not that kids are less smart today it's that more kids have opportunity to get a college education than they did in the 50's.

Was just about to post this. Yes, I think what this article is reporting is likely just a result of expanded participation in running events. Much more young people are running in timed races than have in the past, so naturally median times go up as you add more runners who are just in it for the fun of it. So you have a small group of grizzled competitive runners competing in the over 50 brackets and large numbers of 20-year-olds who don't care about their times and if they had been in earlier generations would never have run in the first place.

In short, this trend probably reflects a healthier more active American population.

Hahaha, how did this become a political debate? If your kids are aiming for mediocrity, that's a YOU problem. That's not what my kids are working towards, and I see plenty of compeitive spirit in the youth today, just like I did when my generation was young 10-20 years ago.

And please read carefully before responding. My comment clearly stated they are "not interested" in long-distance running. There are hundreds of other athletic endeavours one can participate and compete in. Elite competitors in today's youth have their eyes set on real measures of fitness and strength...not slowly half-jogging for three hours at a time.

Usain Bolt is probably "not interested" in marathon running, doesn't make him uncompetitive, just means that he's more interested in sprinting.

There are plenty of more interesting sports to be competitive in, as someone at my brazilian jiu-jitsu gym put it 'I think people like distance running because you can be the most un-talented, un-athletic person in the world and still be ok just by stubbornly sticking with it'

This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. Distribution and use of this material are governed by our Subscriber Agreement and by copyright law. For non-personal use or to order multiple copies, please contact Dow Jones Reprints at 1-800-843-0008 or visit www.djreprints.com.